The Glass Forest

by Cynthia Swanson

  In return for Uncle Paul’s stories, her father opened up to Uncle Paul in ways he didn’t with other people. On the drive to Haverstraw, he told Uncle Paul that when he was in France, he rubbed out a German by pushing him off a cliff. “The enemy was wounded and didn’t have his gun,” her father said. “But I had mine. I could have filled that Kraut bastard with lead, but there was something more satisfying in landing a solid kick in his gut and watching his body fall fifty feet. Fathead screamed until he hit the rocks below.”

  He paused, and then said, “Sometimes, I still feel guilty about it. As if it wasn’t fair of me to kill an unarmed man that way.”

  Uncle Paul shrugged. “Bastard had it coming,” he said. “And even if he didn’t, it’s a dog-eat-dog world.” He looked at Ruby’s father and said, “If the tides were turned, Henry, he would have rubbed you out. You always—always—have to look out for number one.”

  • • •

  Finally, Aunt Angie turns off the television set and they head to Ruby’s mother’s bedroom. Ruby has long since retreated into her own room, so when Uncle Paul opens her door and checks on her, she’s lying in bed reading. She looks up and tells him she’s going to go to sleep soon.

  “You do that,” he says, opening the door a bit wider, like he wants to come in her room.

  But he doesn’t. From the doorway, his eyes meet hers. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart,” he tells her. His voice is gentle and she’s grateful for that.

  She nods, and Uncle Paul says, “Get your rest, Ruby. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll see you then,” she says, making her voice sound sleepy. She turns off her bedside lamp and pulls the covers up to her chin, as if she’s ready for sleep. Uncle Paul closes the door with a soft click.

  But of course she’s not ready for sleep. Once the house is dark and still, she slips through her window and out of the birdcage.

  • • •

  Very late at night, when it’s cloudy and darker out than it’s been yet this autumn or any autumn in her memory and there’s fits-and-starts drizzle falling, she finds her way back in the slick, rain-glistened woods until she gets to the rock. And there she meets Shepherd.

  He’s in a wool sweater over a collared shirt, with his hat low on his forehead like he always wears it. She takes out her Zippo, igniting it and holding the flame up to Shepherd’s face. There’s water on his cheeks and she doesn’t know if it’s rain or tears.

  “Are you all right?” she asks him.

  He nods and says, “Seeing you, Ruby, brings up so much emotion in me.”

  She closes the Zippo and puts it in her pocket. She shivers and he looks at her with concern. “This weather,” he says. “You’re freezing.”

  He pulls off the sweater and places it on her shoulders. She ties its sleeves across her collarbone, then wraps her arms around Shepherd’s neck, laying her head against his chest. He puts his powerful arms around her back, and she lets herself rest there for a moment before stepping back and looking him in the eye.

  “What did they mean at the funeral?” she asks. “When those people said you didn’t belong there—what did they mean?” Her eyes search his. “I know what it wasn’t about,” she says.

  He nods but doesn’t speak.

  “Is it about this, then?” Ruby reaches into her patchwork bag and pulls out a crumpled newspaper. She unfolds it and holds it up for Shepherd to see. Its date was a few weeks ago. The top of the page has the word OPINIONS in large, bold letters that become smudged as raindrops hit them. She can see Shepherd’s eyes go right to the editorial letter titled, “What’s Wrong with the John Birch Society? In a Word: Everything.”

  There is no need for him to read it. Surely, he’s familiar with its contents.

  “You wrote that, didn’t you?” Ruby asks.

  “Well, Ruby, it’s my name right there at the end, in black and white.” Shepherd’s voice is subdued.

  “My father was furious about this,” Ruby says.

  Shepherd nods. “I’m not at all surprised.”

  Ruby doesn’t answer. She takes a step away from him.

  He reaches out and touches her shoulder. “Ruby, I’ve never kept it secret who I am,” he says. “Not from you. Not from . . . anyone.”

  She turns to look up at him. “You promise me?” she asks. “You promise me there were never any secrets?”

  “There were things that were not discussed,” he tells her. “But never any secrets and never any lies.”

  She believes him. She steps back into the circle of his warmth and puts her arms around his neck again. She feels like she could stay there forever, but of course she can’t.

  “Thank you for meeting me tonight,” she tells him as they break apart.

  “You know I’m here anytime you need me.”

  She explains about the airline tickets, the plan to leave for Wisconsin in a few days. She speaks of other things, too. Things Shepherd needs to know.

  She goes on for a long time. She’s talkative, in the way she is only with Shepherd.

  Finally, it’s time to part. She begins to untie the sweater from her shoulders, but he puts up his hand to stop her. “You keep it,” he says softly.

  Shepherd retreats over the stone wall to his car. Ruby hikes back through the woods to the birdcage.

  37

  * * *

  Silja

  1950–1951

  August 1950 marked the one-year anniversary of the Peekskill riots. Reading newspaper articles commemorating the anniversary, Silja thought about David. What would have happened if he hadn’t been there? She was loath to think about it.

  Silja hadn’t seen him since that night. She caught herself looking for him sometimes—at the train station, running errands on the weekend, going to concerts and performances at Ruby’s school. She’d play out scenarios in her head, thinking about what it would be like if they caught each other’s eyes across a crowded train platform or a busy street.

  She knew that running into him was unlikely. She didn’t know where he lived, his last name, or anything else about him. And yet she continued to daydream.

  • • •

  In October, Silja started a new job as manager of food operations at the Rutherford Hotel in midtown Manhattan. She was courted by the Rutherford. They knew her from Littleton Foods; she’d worked with the old manager for years. When he announced his impending retirement, the boss called Silja for an interview. The job was securely hers that afternoon.

  Her position at the Rutherford paid better and was more prestigious than her work at Littleton had been, but it required longer hours. She began taking an earlier train to the city—6:36 a.m.—and often the 6:10 p.m. home. She rarely saw Ruby. But Ruby understood that a mother has to do what a mother has to do. Ruby was compliant, like Silja herself had been as a child. The life Silja had grown up living in the Alku—the life she shared with Mikaela—was simply her life. There were no choices offered, and even at a young age, Silja knew her best bet was to help her mother and to grow up as well as she could. Ruby was the same type of child.

  Around the time Silja started working at the Rutherford, Henry sent away for information about a correspondence course in crime detection. The advertisement promised he could learn to be a private investigator “at home in his spare time”—a phrase that made Silja smile grimly when Henry showed it to her; spare time was something Henry had in spades. The correspondence school sent him a slim volume titled The Blue Book of Crime, which he pored over until it was dog-eared. He decided to enroll in the full course, which came in the mail one assignment at a time, along with a fingerprinting kit and other materials. After Henry finished and returned each assignment’s exam, another assignment arrived. All told, there were sixty-eight assignments, which the school said could be completed in just over a year.

  But Henry took much more time than that—performing the steps in each assignment several times, reviewing the exam until he felt sure it was perfect. He said if h
e was going to be slipshod about it, it wasn’t worth doing at all.

  Silja sighed, but didn’t protest. In the city—in her new job, as she met colleagues and forged new professional relationships—she was vague when asked what her husband did for a living. She changed the subject as quickly as she could.

  • • •

  Two months after she started her new job, Paul returned for another visit, and he and Henry once again set about cavorting, tinkering, and in general acting like two retirees instead of two young men in their prime. Ruby gamboled happily around the two of them. Silja kept her mouth shut, her head down, and her feet walking toward the train depot. She spent as much time at work as she could.

  And then, as she began to think Paul was wearing out his welcome, he announced that he’d be staying in Stonekill, but not with them. “I . . . um, someone else has offered hospitality,” he stammered.

  It turned out that the principal at Stonekill High School had been carrying on with Henry’s brother. She was a divorcée in her midthirties. Paul told Henry and Silja that he and the principal had met last time he was in Stonekill, struck up an interest in one another, and stayed in touch.

  Her name was Mrs. Hawke. What sort of name is that? Silja wondered. And if one was saddled with such a name, wouldn’t one go back to one’s maiden name after a divorce? Silja would.

  Mrs. Hawke was short, plain, and dumpy. Silja couldn’t understand what Paul saw in her. She had glimpsed Mrs. Hawke around town, and she knew the woman lived in a cottage toward the outskirts of town, not far from one of the new housing developments. She drove a dark green Studebaker that predated the war. She had a golden retriever; Silja had seen her walking it about town.

  The night before Mother’s Day, they had Paul and Mrs. Hawke over for dinner. When Paul introduced them, Silja called her Mrs. Hawke and she said, “Please—it’s Kristina. With a K.”

  Silja raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  Earlier in the day she’d suggested to Henry that he make something elegant—coq au vin, perhaps, or sole meunière with sautéed mushrooms and capers. He was perfectly capable of preparing such dishes, but for this meal Henry insisted on casual fare. He dragged the Weber grill from the garage onto the dilapidated brick patio out back. (Rebuilding the patio was on his endless list of “someday” household repairs.) He flipped hamburgers and served them with potato salad and grilled vegetables. Silja scowled but let it go, opening one of her best bottles of Cabernet and passing generously poured wineglasses around the rusty metal table—the table that wobbled on the bricks no matter which way Henry turned it

  “Do you cook, Silja?” Kristina asked. Although not yet six o’clock, it was dark under the two oak trees that dominated the backyard; they were already leafed out due to an unusually warm spring. Mosquitoes nipped the women’s bare arms; Henry lit a thick candle to chase them away.

  Silja shook her head. “I’m in the food business, but I don’t cook often,” she admitted. “Henry is the chef in the family.”

  Kristina nodded. “Well, it’s certainly delicious.”

  It actually wasn’t his best. The distraction of someone new at the table seemed to cause Henry difficulty timing the meal. The burgers were past well done and the vegetables were nearly raw. Yet, no one lifted a finger to help Henry—which, Silja realized later, was rather ungenerous of them.

  Picking at her meal, she wondered: When did she become so critical of her husband? Now that she’d all but given up the dream that Henry would ever do anything meaningful with his life, did that suggest she’d settle for nothing less than househusband perfection?

  • • •

  Over the course of the evening, Silja drank more wine than she normally would. But so did Kristina. With a loosened tongue, Kristina told Silja all about herself. She’d graduated from Barnard—the college Silja had dreamed of attending but couldn’t afford, having been turned down for a scholarship there. Kristina graduated several years before Silja finished at Hunter. She, too, had married during the war—but the marriage was childless. Mr. Hawke returned from Europe and they had remained together for a few years before going their separate ways.

  Kristina shrugged. “Not meant to be,” was all she said. “Guess I was waiting for this fine gent instead.” She shone her eyes at Paul.

  Silja found this amusing—more, she was sure, due to the wine than the actual entertainment value. She felt herself becoming more generous in her opinions. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all, Paul shacking up here in Stonekill.

  Kristina and Silja compared favorite actors and movies—Kristina was a Gary Cooper fan, and Silja still adored Cary Grant. They agreed that some weekend afternoon they would see a matinee together.

  The evening ended late, long after Henry put Ruby to bed. After Paul and Kristina drove away, Henry and Silja silently climbed the stairs. She felt dizzy and tired, and fell into bed without saying good night to her husband.

  • • •

  The next day was Mother’s Day. “I don’t understand the reasoning behind a ‘holiday’ like this,” Henry said as he began washing the breakfast dishes. “Especially for someone like you, Silja. You already have a nice dinner waiting for you every night. You already spend your weekends relaxing. Every day is Mother’s Day, isn’t it?”

  Silja sighed and picked up the Sunday Times from the kitchen table. Wordlessly, she headed to the parlor.

  At least Ruby made her a card at school, which Silja placed on the mantel and looked at frequently throughout the rest of the day. Happy Mother’s Day to the best mother in the world. Did Ruby decide on that wording herself, Silja wondered, or did the teacher encourage every child to write such a sentiment?

  Thinking back on the evening with Kristina Hawke, Silja had mixed emotions. It was fun at the time, but now she felt embarrassed to have actually hit it off with a divorced high school principal living in sin with her frivolous brother-in-law. Wasn’t such a relationship beneath her? Surely she could find someone more suitable with whom to strike up a friendship.

  But who? Mentally, Silja scanned the names of women she knew in town—from the blue-collar mothers in her neighborhood to the snooty members of the local country club. She shook her head. She didn’t have anything in common with any of them. At least Kristina liked movies.

  • • •

  In June, she and Kristina were finally able to arrange a movie date. They saw The Prowler, with Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes. It was a dark story about a cop who fell in love with a married woman and went on to kill her husband, falsely proclaiming self-defense. He married the woman and they ran off together, but then she found out he was actually her first husband’s killer. To complicate matters, she was expecting the cop’s baby. It all ended rather gloomily, with the pair split up and the cop shot by a sheriff’s deputy as he tried to escape his past and his own crimes.

  Kristina watched silently, munching on popcorn, while Silja nibbled licorice. After the credits rolled by, they turned to one another. “Well,” Kristina said. “Every man certainly has his dirty little secrets.”

  Silja gave her a look that Kristina must have thought odd, because she smiled and told Silja it was all right. She patted Silja’s hand. “Dirty little secrets are not the end of the world,” she assured Silja. “If you consider how many people there are on this planet, living most of their lives behind closed doors with who-knows-what going on behind them—if you think about that, you realize your own secrets might be rather tame in comparison.”

  Was that true? Silja often thought of her own situation as being a no-win predicament. But perhaps everyone else had worse problems than her own.

  They saw a few other movies after that, and several times that summer Kristina and Paul came for dinner. But by October, Silja sensed a cooling in Kristina’s attitude toward her. She didn’t return Silja’s calls and never initiated contact with Silja herself. When Silja swallowed her pride and asked Henry to ask Paul about it, Henry reported that Paul told him Kristina was
buried in work since the start of the school year.

  How humiliating, Silja thought. How humiliating to have attempted to form a friendship, and to be rejected—moreover, by someone who was nearly as much of an oddball in this town as Silja was herself.

  She tried to shrug it off, but it made her feel lonelier than ever.

  • • •

  On the blustery, cold afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 1951—the day before Ruby’s ninth birthday—Paul showed up on their doorstep. He was there, he said, to tell them good-bye. “I have to move on,” he said as he stood on the porch with a suitcase at his feet. “My train leaves in twenty minutes. I’m not welcome here anymore.”

  “Paul.” Henry moved forward and clasped his brother on the shoulder. “You know you’re always welcome here with us.”

  Paul shrugged. “I made a mistake,” he said quietly. “I shouldn’t have . . . gotten involved here. I wanted Stonekill to be somewhere I could come back to anytime. And now . . . ” He looked around helplessly. “Tell Ruby I said good-bye, won’t you?”

  Silja felt her lips press into a severe line. “She and Sarah went to the O’Briens’ place to play with their girls.” She nodded over her right shoulder. “It’s just at the end of the block. You could go say good-bye yourself.”

  Paul’s face held alarm. “No, that wouldn’t . . . I don’t want to interrupt her playtime.” He looked away. “And I don’t want to knock on a stranger’s door.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Silja pressed. “You know who the O’Briens are. They’re the family with all those girls. Didn’t Kristina pay their oldest daughter to walk her dog a couple of times?”

  Paul shook his head. “I don’t know anything about that. And besides, I need to head out. I don’t have time to go down there right now.”